And So Is He
by Caramelchan
Summary: Companion piece to She's More. Same story, different point of view. TATE


Disclaimer: If I was seven years younger, I would call one Barbie Doll "Kate" and call the man Barbie Doll "Tony". Even that would mean I owned more of the NCIS universe than I do now.

Spoilers: Most of season two... major spoilers for SWAK and Twilight.

Slightly AU because Kate doesn't die in this!

AN: So this is the other part of "She's More" that was niggling at the back of my head ever since I wrote it! It doesn't really matter what order you read them in, they are exactly the same story! Thanks to whoever reviewed, telling me that I should write this. I can't remember who you are off the top of my head, but thank you so much! I found this one even more fun to write!

* * *

I have no idea how this happened. I certainly never intended it (from the very beginning at least), but here we are. Just me and him. The last person I ever thought I'd be with. My sexist and immature co-worker that I hated on first glance, the type of man that any self-respecting woman would never, ever even think about dating, despite him being quite good looking. Okay, very good looking. I'll never forget the look he gave me the day I first met him, the first time he pissed me off. He was sitting in the President's chair on Air Force One. His cheeky, cat-that-got-the-cream grin was imprinted on my mind too long for it to be healthy and I stood there, torn between curiosity about him and my burning desire to shoot him on the spot. I decided to avoid the latter because I thought that his boss perhaps wouldn't let me shoot his agent and not get away with it. And it wasn't as if I would have to spend much time with him; the investigation wouldn't last forever and then he'd be gone, right?

How wrong I was…

* * *

I left the Secret Service and ended up in NCIS. And I love it here. Everyone I work with is great: Abby, the crazy, Goth lab-tech that I fell in love with instantly; McGee, the timid agent that I haven't exactly taken a shine to (something to do with the fact that on his first day as a special agent, he ended up with his head in my skirt twice, perhaps?); Ducky, the medical examiner that can talk for hours; Gibbs, my boss; and of course, my new partner, the person I hoped to never see again after he disembarked Air Force One.

He's not always so bad that I would rather work with anyone else; in fact, his jokes and smirks can sometimes brighten an otherwise dull, day. I don't think I could tell him how much I would sometimes look forward to getting to work, just to hear him say "Good Morning Kate," and then he would quiz me about a date I might have had the night before and I would pretend to be annoyed. In truth, that first conversation was sometimes the best part of the day.

I spent too much time pretending to be annoyed with him. True, at first, he was a total scumbag, staring at me in the way that only someone as sex-crazed as he was, could. That annoyed me a lot, so I spent my first few months at NCIS teasing him or arguing with him.

After those early months that I spent settling into the team, I suddenly felt as if something changed. I couldn't pinpoint what exactly, but one day I noticed a different atmosphere between the two of us.

One day he bought me flowers. So, he snooped my PDA, but it did mean that I got a gift that I liked. It almost showed that he cared.

* * *

I've never been a particularly emotional person, at least on the outside. I rarely open the floodgates and let myself cry, and never in front of other people.

But he's the last person I ever wanted to cry in front of. I didn't want him seeing me as weak. I felt that I'd already had to prove myself as the woman he couldn't get, so I really didn't need him to see me cry. But it happened.

It was because a man named Ernie Yost asked me to dance with him. How could I refuse? He'd received the medal of honour, one of the most respected of medals. I felt honoured that he'd even asked me.

So we danced.

And for some reason, I became all emotional. I don't even remember why, but when Ernie and I finished tangoing, my eyes were stinging with tears. These soon turned to tears of embarrassment as I remembered that he and McGee had been standing and watching me the whole time. I couldn't even look at him because I was so scared that all I would see was a man trying not to laugh.

When I did make eye contact with him, once I had cleaned myself up a little, I was surprised to see a strange expression on his face. It was a mixture of pride and what could have been jealousy, but not the expected smirk that I had grown used to from him.

It's strange how I expected that tears would lose me the respect of the team. Looking back, I realise that the whole incident gained me more than just respect.

* * *

He seemed to spend an awful lot of time looking at me. When we were out in the field, it seemed that looking at me was all he could do. When we were in the office, he was always sending not-so-subtle glances my way. And the reason I noticed? Because I was always looking back at him. I'd always notice him out of the corner of my eye. I couldn't ignore him.

Sometimes, I would let him know that I'd noticed him looking, just to spark up a conversation.

All that, just to beat the silence.

I hated it when there was silence between us. We bantered. We flirted. We criticised. And I loved it. It became part of who we were.

I remember the first time he properly touched me. Not like that; just the first time that we had physical contact that was anything more than hands brushing against one another.

I was dressed up to go out and I had to look good. I had on a nice dress and my hair was styled the way I like it. When I was ready to go, I came into the office to ask for his opinion. I didn't really care what he thought; I just wanted to be told by someone that I looked nice.

I was surprised, to say the least, by his reaction. Instead of just telling me how I looked, he decided to take it upon himself to make me look perfect.

He pulled down my dress so it sat a good few inches lower on my chest. He pulled the shoulder straps so they hung round my upper arms. He put his hands in my hair and shook it out of its style. He puckered his lips and I swore for a second that he was going to bring my lips to his and kiss me. To my relief, all he did was blow on my face so that my hair blew backwards.

He told me how much better I looked and left it at that.

Later on, I realised that I hadn't put my outfit back to how it was because I did care what he thought really.

And I wasn't totally relieved when he _only_ blew my hair back off my face.

* * *

That was the first time that I got any inkling that I might like him as more than a partner. I mean, people had said it before and I'd be lying if I said that the idea hadn't crossed my mind that it might be possible. I can see why people would think that we were dating from the way that we acted, but up to that moment, I'd never thought of it as a possible future reality. It had been an occasional passing thought, until the moment when his hands were in my hair and I genuinely thought that he was going to kiss me. That's when everything changed.

* * *

But then he went and did something so cruel and stupid and selfish that the dream almost died. His actions truly hurt me. Sure he'd got on my nerves before then, but nothing like how he did with the Wet Tee Shirt photo.

So it was a big mistake on my part from quite a few years ago. It was before I even joined the secret service. I regret it now and have done ever since it happened, but I never regretted it as much as I did the day that he came back from his Spring Break with the evidence of it on his PDA.

If I wouldn't have got thrown in jail for it, I would have shot him then and there. He'd taken it way too far that time.

* * *

I thought I would never forgive him. For the next few weeks, I was furious at him and almost shook with rage every time I saw him. But then something happened that turned both our worlds upside down. He got ill. Worse than that, he got the pneumonic plague!

And because life seems to have the worst timing for everything, it all happened on the day that I had the flu (I had even considered staying home that day! How ironic). So, because of my weakened immune system, I had to go and spend time with him, in isolation. At that point, neither of us knew that the infection was going to be so serious. At first, I had thought that someone was trying to scare us and had put a load of talcum powder in the envelope for a joke.

I soon found out that that was not the case. He got worse. The jokes and movie trivia that he usually spouted in every spare second became few and far between, while his coughing fits became more and more frequent. They weren't just normal coughs either. They were deep, rattling coughs that sounded as if he was trying to cough up his insides.

I started to ask myself questions: "how long before I start coughing like that?"; "how long before he stops coughing like that?".

And then I found out that I hadn't been infected after all. The painful coughing fits that kept coming and taking him in their vice-like grip were going to pass me by. For half a second, I was relieved that I could get out of isolation and back to work, but then I realised that that would leave him on his own. Dying.

Because I know what disease he had caught by then.

It was plague.

Gibbs ordered me out, but I couldn't leave.

I couldn't leave him.

As much as it hurt me to see him in such pain, I couldn't leave.

Then things got really bad. He started coughing up blood. I couldn't stay where I was, at the opposite end of the ward; I had to go and stand by him, show him that I was there for him.

Because I had chosen to stay, despite being perfectly healthy, the doctors made me wear a mask.

He asked me why I wasn't coughing up blood like he was. I answered in the only way I knew how: teasingly. I joked that I was stronger than he was and that I was fighting the disease better than he was.

So then he asked why I was wearing a mask.

He knew.

He knew I wasn't ill. He had to. He wasn't as stupid as Gibbs and I took him for.

I could see it in his eyes.

I wondered what that would mean for us, once we were out of isolation. What I did changed everything we had between us and had made us into totally new people.

I wondered if, after he got out of hospital, the relationship that had always been just out of our reach might finally happen.

Or I would have wondered that if I hadn't been so distracted. His condition deteriorated. I was ordered out of the ward while they worked on him and I immediately burst into tears.

All I can remember is that I collapsed into Ducky's arms, sobbing my heart out. I'd just realised how difficult it'd be, how hard I would be hit if he didn't make it.

I'd just realised how much I would miss him.

I'd just realised that I was head-over-heels in love with him.

* * *

Later that day, I heard from Gibbs that he was going to be okay. Relief flooded me like a drug and I even let a few tears of happiness escape my tired eyes. Gibbs looked at me strangely, but I didn't care. All I could think about was the fact the he was getting better.

I managed to convince the doctors into letting me back into the isolated ward to stay with him. I chose the closest bed this time, not the furthest. All I wanted was to be with him. I watched him for a moment before going and lying down myself.

I'd thought he was asleep, but as I put my head down on the pillow, he spoke and when I lifted my head to look at him, he was grinning so broadly that I thought that his face would split.

* * *

After he got out of hospital, he wasn't at work for a few weeks. I went to see him a few times with Abby and the others, but I didn't have the courage to go and see him on my own to tell him how I felt. Damn my sudden cowardice. Mostly, I let Abby do the talking and I just sat silently at the end of his sofa, trying not to look as if I had fallen for him. Sometimes he would catch my eye and give me that light-up-the-room grin of his and I would feel my heart melt in my chest.

And then he was back at work.

The banter started early on and I was sure that everything was back to normal. It was as if what had happened when he was ill meant nothing. But then I realised that nothing had happened. It only seemed that way to me because I had been having an inner battle with myself the whole time. There was no reason that anything should have changed.

But people were hinting about "us" more than every before. McGee in particular. I was ready to castrate him by the end of his first day back because of his constant comments. Just because they were the truth didn't mean that I wanted them voiced.

On the whole, I was glad that he was back. I would be happier him not knowing how I felt and us staying the way that we had always been rather than me telling him and then being embarrassed when I got rejected.

* * *

The day he came back, I ended up vulnerable too many times for my liking. Three more times than I'd have liked.

I needed a knight in shining armour twice that day.

The only thing that made that situation better was the fact that he came to my rescue. First, he snatched me from the jaws of a snake (my phobia), and then he took a bomb for McGee and I.

I was so grateful that by the end of the day, I couldn't put it into words. I didn't think that just a "thank you" would put across how in his debt I felt.

* * *

I was glad of the distraction that soon arose. I was put on protection detail for Gibbs. I had to focus on my boss rather than my partner, and the break from constantly thinking about him made me feel so much better. Until I took a bullet for him. That could never make a person feel good.

I remember jumping in front of a gun and then falling. My side hurt for a mere second before intense, stabbing pain took hold of my whole abdomen. People who think that getting shot in the vest leaves you unscathed are totally wrong. You still feel the full force of the bullet and it hurts.

I lay there, gripped by the ache until I the deafening gunfire all around me stopped. Gibbs had come over and rolled me onto my back, to which I replied with a groan. Then two strong hands took mine and he and Gibbs helped me up. He started teasing right away, but I could see the worry in his face, behind his laugh.

* * *

It was that evening, in the lift, that we talked properly for the first time.

Well, mainly he talked to me and I, as I was too stunned with happiness to speak, gave him one-or-two-word answers.

He said something about too many things going wrong recently; too many risks and too many near-misses. Then he told me how grateful he was that I had stayed with him in hospital. Then he told me that he'd been hiding his feelings for me for too long and, because he'd got the idea that I might feel the same, he asked if I "would do him the honour of being his girlfriend?".

Then he said the one thing that could better his previous comment.

He told me that he loved me.

So I told him the same.

* * *

I'm fighting to stay awake, but this must be a dream. We're in bed together and he's gently caressing me, soothing every ache and pain I've ever felt. His tender fingertips linger on the dark bruise where I was shot and despite his obvious care, it still stings. It makes me wince a little. As a way of apology, he kisses me again.

We don't need to speak; we know how much we love each other and we don't need words to say it again.

He notices that my eyes are drooping and wraps his strong arms around me and puts my head on his chest; my new favourite pillow. He closes both of my eyes with his thumb, telling me to sleep. In his embrace, with my skin against his, I've never felt so at home.

So I sleep.


End file.
